Hellsinger 01 - Fish and Ghosts (P) (MM) (33 page)

I came on down, fell from the sky

So fucking glad the Devil stopped by

Tears wiped dry, bruises faded from skin

Made whole and loved, drunk off Sinner’s Gin.

“It looks like it’s working!” Tristan shouted through a stretch of guitar licks.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Wolf yelled back, his voice suddenly too loud in a drop of chords and words.

“You said ghosts are like infrasound,” Tristan explained hastily. “They’re on a spectrum, right? Well, so is music. I figured if she’s physical, she wouldn’t be able to stand something audio in her physical spectrum. So, music!”

“God, I love you. That’s fucking brilliant.” He cupped Tristan’s face and gave the man a deep kiss. “I’ll thank you better later. Right now….”

“Get rid of her.” The blond nodded, his eyes bright. “Got it.”

Behind him, Winifred continued to scream and wail, turning Wolf back around in alarm. His mother was flinging as much of the salt she could on the ghost, the white specks turning Winifred a mottled black where they struck. More and more of the woman’s dress flowed from her form, leaving small dunes on the floor as she struggled to get free of the salt-encrusted poker stuck in her ravaged head.

The music was relentless, hammering at the specter as she continued her macabre dance, but Wolf wasn’t leaving anything to chance. Winifred was spotty in places, and he could see her disintegrating right in front of them.

Motioning to the mess on the floor, he shouted at Gidget and Tristan, “Find the ring! It’s probably anchoring her here.”

“That ring’s a family heirloom,” Matt yelled out from behind the desk.

“So’s this fucking ghost, and we’re going to get rid of her too,” Gidget screamed back, flinging her hair away from her face. “When this is done, we are going to have a serious talk about your priorities!”

“I’m running out of salt, Wolf!” Meegan warned.

“Go look for the ring,” Tristan said, patting Wolf on the shoulder. “I’ll grab salt off the floor and help your mom.”

The table had landed on its side a few feet away from where it started, tossing the candles and sand everywhere. A few of the salt salvers survived the toss, their contents mingling in with sand and ground bone, but thankfully, the candles guttered out before their flames could catch on anything nearby. The sand was lumpy with wax and crystals his mother had set into her mandala, so Wolf dropped to his knees and frantically dug through the mess, hoping to find the jeweled monstrosity that brought the howling nightmare to the Grange.

A second later, his heart leaped when Gidget sat up suddenly, brandishing the ring. Shoving it under Wolf’s nose, she squealed, “I found it!”

“Smash it!” he ordered, handing her one of the heavy candle bases his mother had dragged in from her van. “They’ve got her cornered. Sort of.”

Tristan was doing his best, going toe-to-toe with the phantom who’d spent a good part of her corporeal existence trying to crawl down his gullet. Her wobbly stumps were withered cobweb shapes flapping about helplessly as Winifred tried to escape. His mother had grabbed the poker and wedged herself against the curve of the desk, anchoring herself against Winifred’s now desperately churning form.

The ghost’s once horrifying visage was now a shredded mass of black slime and sand flecks, her jaw ruined and her eye sockets now a dull matte, the light gleaming from their empty holes fading rapidly. The sand coming off of her dress was now pouring from her where they’d done the most damage, creating an oddly disjointed sand painting beneath her disintegrating feet.

“I can’t,” Gidget said tearfully.

“What?” Wolf’s breath caught, and he nearly choked on his tongue. “Are you fucking crazy?”

“I can’t do it!” Gidget wailed. “Matt gave it to me, and….”

“Fuck that. Give it to me.” He reached for the ring and tore it from her hands. “I’ll buy you a new one. Whatever you want. But that fucking thing goes.”

He wasn’t sure what the candle holder was made of, but it was large, heavy, and definitely up to the task. He cleared a space on the floor, put the ring down, and raised the holder over his head. Taking a deep breath, Wolf slammed the base down, smashing the ring beneath its cumbrous weight.

The ring shattered.

And so did the woman tied to it.

Winifred went out loudly, her body exploding into bits, leaving nothing behind but the splatter of fading wet shadows, sand, and bits of cobwebs floating in the air. The poker clattered to the floor, and Meegan tumbled back, landing on her ass as the ghost’s resistance was suddenly taken away, leaving her nothing to leverage herself against.

Tristan leaned over, supporting himself with his hands on his knees, and panted to catch his breath. His blond hair was tangled, wild around his patrician face, and a small smear of blood marred the length of his straight nose. Grit speckled his mouth, remnants of the salt Wolf poured over Winifred’s prehensile fingers, and his clothes were filthy, but to Wolf, he’d never looked sexier.

Wolf spat out a piece of cobweb and grinned up at his lover. “So, still up for Chinese? ’Cause you know, this whole thing can count as our first date. Shitty horror movie and dinner.”

“Sure,” Tristan muttered as the music slid over to something softer. “Chinese sounds great, but next time, I’m picking the fucking movie. Yours sucked.”

Epilogue

W
OLF
SHOULDN
’
T
have been able to see her. If see was the word for the barely there whisper of a woman standing across from Tristan on the other side of the reception desk. The filmy specter grew stronger as he came down the stairs, her dress swaying with fringe and beads when she brought her hand up to pat down an errant curl of her short bob. He could almost make out the feathers of her spangled headband, but her legs were still amorphous, although there was a strong hint of a pair of Mary Jane heels tapping soundlessly at the floor. The ostrich feathers on her headband danced in time with her feet as she cocked her head, listening carefully to his lover as he registered the Grange’s first spectral guest since they’d turned Winifred into a pile of smoking sand.

Tristan was practically beaming as he leaned in to talk to the glossy shadow across the counter from him.

Wolf had to give the cleaning crew credit. The lobby sparkled, and the floors were spotless, returned to their glossy, overwaxed state. The past few days had been hectic, a beehive of activity and flawed explanation about how the lobby got to be the mess the crew found it in. Tristan had hemmed and hawed a bit, running off into stories before Wolf finally shoved him aside, wrote a blank check, and told them to make the place look good.

The table was back up with a new vase, a shallow, wide affair in a translucent cerulean blue. The sprays of lavender, cabbage roses, and some white fluffy flowers Wolf couldn’t identify were less fussy than the lobby’s previous arrangement, but the same could be said about the blond man he was coming downstairs to see.

Or maybe, Wolf thought, he didn’t have his knickers in a twist anymore about ghosts and their existence. They certainly were present at the Grange. The rest of the world, however, was still suspect.

“Thank you, Miss White.” Tristan scribbled something on a line in the register. As difficult as it was to see the lithe woman’s shape, there was no mistaking the flirtatious cant of her head and the bright flash of her broad smile. Tristan’s answering murmur was a soft acknowledgement of the woman’s teasing jibe, his cheeks flushing with a slight pink glow at something she said. “Meg, then. Thank you. You can call me Tristan.”

Wolf stood on the landing halfway up the first-floor stairs, leaning on the banister as Tristan finished up with his guest. The light on his right shoulder went dark for a moment, and he glanced behind him, a part of him still a bit on edge.

“I’m not going to knife you.” Mara rolled her words, her face smug with satisfaction. If he didn’t know better, Wolf would have said she made a game of sneaking up on him and scaring the shit out of him. But then, he thought, he really
didn’t
know any better. For all he knew, it was how the housekeeper got her jollies. Between that and counting the linens, the Grange didn’t offer up much for entertainment.

For Mara, anyway. Wolf was entertained just fine. Especially by the long-legged, green-eyed blond artist standing a few feet below him.

Mara returned the day after Winifred exploded, and the Grange and its occupants settled into a lazy routine, mostly centered around cleaning and, for Tristan and Wolf, sex. Gidget and Matt periodically dropped by, and his mother had left a day ago, her brightly painted VW van bumbling down the driveway to take her back to her life at the crystal shop and dealing with Hellsingers looking for supplies.

“It’s good to be home, Mara?” he asked the older woman.

Smoothing down the front of her housekeeper’s uniform, she quirked a saucy grin at him. “You tell me, Dr. Kincaid. Is it good to be home?”

He caught her meaning as she glanced at the stairs below. Nodding, he thought of the craziness over the past weeks and the blond man he’d found living in his heart.

“Yeah, Mara. It’s damned good to finally be home.”

The shadowy figure was gone by the time Wolf looked again, but Mara was turning, as if to greet someone coming up the stairs. She smiled warmly at Wolf, then patted his arm. “You go to your man. I’ll see our guest to her room. She looks to be a pistol.”

“See you later, Mara.” He didn’t question the woman being able to see the flapper. Wolf was pretty sure, after a few months of staying at the Grange, he’d pick up on the boo-wigglies as much as she did. “Try not to get into too much trouble.”

“Oh, little boy, I’ve caused more trouble than you’ve ever imagined,” the housekeeper scoffed. “Go on. I’ve got to work to do.”

He couldn’t see the ghost coming up the stairs, and other than a brief hope he hadn’t run right through her, Wolf hit the lobby with a cocky swagger. Tristan watched him cross the space between them, his expression bemused when Wolf gathered him up in his arms and swung him about in a rocking hug.

“Missed me?” Wolf murmured into his lover’s ear.

“We’ve only been apart for twenty minutes.”

“So you were
dying
with longing, then?”

“Devastated,” Tristan drawled. “Nearly suicidal. Thank God I have Boris to stop me from leaping off the desk to my certain death.”

“Yeah, I can see you wasting away.”

He stopped rocking the man and trapped Tristan against the wooden counter. Capturing the man’s lips in a fierce kiss, Wolf explored the warm depths of Tristan’s mouth, sucking on the tip of his tongue, then teasing him with a nipping bite at the end of his nose. He left Tristan panting, and from the thickening of the man’s cock beneath his jeans, Wolf guessed he’d also left him wanting more.

Rubbing his nose on the wet spot he’d left behind, Wolf whispered, “So are you done here? Can I take you upstairs and ravage you?”

“Actually, I’ve got to go pee. Ravaging is going to have to wait,” Tristan teased, and Wolf dropped his head in mock exasperation. “Can you watch the lobby for me? It’s Tuesday. I keep hoping Cook will come back.”

“You’re assuming I can see her,” he pointed out.

“I have faith. You see Jack. Maybe you just need to be tuned.” Tristan suckled on Wolf’s lower lip and let his hands drop down to cup Wolf’s ass. “Besides, you only have to watch out for wet footprints on the floor.”

“She’ll wait, right?”

“Maybe. Once it hits noon, the ghosts usually stop coming. Cook’s different, but I just… don’t want her to come in and not find anyone here.” Tristan’s guileless pout nearly broke Wolf’s heart. “I don’t want her to think she’s alone. She might not talk to you, but she’ll see you and wait.”

“Don’t worry, babe. I’ll be here.” He’d come a long way in believing the Grange held ghosts, but the skeptic in him still picked and prodded at the mysteries left to be uncovered. “You have any idea why she comes back over and over and the others leave?”

“I don’t know,” Tristan replied softly. “There’s a lot of things I don’t know. Like how come most of the guests aren’t old. Why people show up looking younger than when they probably died. They’re always cheerful, or at least pleasant.”

“Maybe they come here looking like when they were the happiest,” Wolf mused. “Of course I guess that means I’m never going to leave this place ’cause I’m pretty happy right here… right now, Pryce. With your fucking obsessive ghost dog and his red ball.”

“You’re kind of nuts, Kincaid.” Tristan studied him, his eyes going gold in the late morning light.

“You’re supposed to think that was romantic,” Wolf sighed heavily. “And say something like, ‘Yes, Wolf, and I’ll be right here with you. Forever. At the Grange. Like Heather the Cook, except without the coming in every Tuesday to ask after a job.’”

“See? There’s the nuts part, right there.”

“Yes, Wolf.” He rolled his eyes. “I’ll be right—”

“Yes, Wolf. You’re right. I’ll be right here. You, Jack, and the fucking ball…,” Tristan parroted back. “Which I
told
you not to pick up.”